Saturday, October 31, 2015

Larry stood in the rain in the parking lot of the prison and
stared at the sky. Raindrops caused him to blink and Larry wondered how long it
had been since he had seen the sun. He looked down, cleared his vision and
noticed a plant growing near the fence. How long had it been there? He walked
past this spot every day and he never noticed it before. It was nearly a foot
tall and looked like an alien tree of some sort for it had a blood red stalk
and its limbs were red as well. What kind of plant was it? Larry found it odd
that he would choose this moment to notice something, a weed, that had always
been there. Larry felt an odd tingling moving across his skin like a tiny
sailing ship cris-crossing an ocean. He glanced skyward once more and hurried home.

Susan came home to find the case of wine in the sink, all
the bottles uncorked, all the wine drained and gone. She stood looking at the
emptiness of the bottles and wondered if Larry had snapped and gone off the
deep end.

“Baby?” She called out and she wandered into the living room
where Larry was sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa.

“We’ve got to stop drinking so much, Susan.” Larry said as
if she had asked. “Things are about to get a lot stranger than we ever
imagined. We’re either going to ride this thing to the end and get rich doing
it or we’re going down. I think we need to stay sober from this point on.”

“Baby, are you okay?” Susan slid down beside him and took
his hand. “What did she do to you?”

“She told me where Robert Jenkins was buried and how he was
killed.” Larry said without looking at her. “I wrote it all down. Every word of
it.”

“Who the hell is Robert Jenkins?” Susan asked and then
remembered. A rising star of a politician who had disappeared without a trace
after getting involved with one of Christa Fuller’s boyfriends, who had blown
his brains out on the steps of the family’s church. It was the case that got
Fuller the undivided attention of the FBI. “Oh god, Larry, you picked a hell of
a time to stop drinking.”

“She told me every detail of how we hid the body.” Larry
replied. “And then she told me where Marcel hid the money he stole. You aren’t
going to believe how easy it is for us to get the money, Sue. It’s ours for the
losing. And you were right; Christa doesn’t just want sex. She wants out. She
has a plan. If I help her, if we help her, then she’ll leave us and the money
in peace. If we don’t help her then she’s going to tell everyone who will
listen about what happened.” Larry stopped speaking and put his hands over his
face. “We don’t have a choice anymore.”

“The hell we don’t!” Susan snapped. “The hell we’re going to
help that bitch get out! What do you think she’s going to do when she’s back in
the wild? Take up knitting? Larry she’s killed or had killed a half dozen men,
that we know about, and who knows what else she’s done? I say we let her say
whatever she wants to say. Who is going to believe her at this point? Marcel’s
car has turned up in South Carolina! I have no idea how it got there but you
can bet your ass we can prove we had nothing to do with it. Screw the money and
screw her too!” Susan stopped talking suddenly. “I didn’t mean that last part,
literally.”

“Baby, I love you,” Larry said softly, “and you know I will
always do what is right for us, right?”

“Yes,” Susan straddled Larry and hugged him hard.

“You’re pregnant with my son.” Larry told her.

Two minutes, Susan thought, what was two minutes? It was one
hundred and twenty seconds. It was the time it took for toast. It was how long
that damn red light at the corner of Main Street and Liberty to change when she
was running late. Susan had peed on the plastic white stick with two windows on
it and then handed it to Larry. “I’ll be in the bedroom, you know I can’t stand
this sort of thing.” And then she waited. Two minutes. It had to be over by
now. Two minutes had to have gone by. It had been an eternity. It has taken
Larry two minutes to reach orgasm on their wedding night, if that, and two
minutes now seemed like it would stretch out into the stars and moon and…

“You’re pregnant.” Larry said as he walked into the room.

“Take my clothes off of me and fuck me” Susan said. “Now.”

They lay sleeping together and Susan woke up first. Was
Christa telling the truth? Susan put her hand on her belly and wondered why it
would feel like when there was a life inside of her own. Whose life? She was
just a week late, stress, she thought, and she tried to backtrack when she and
Larry had last made love. There had been a party and they were both drunk as
hell and she allowed him just to get him to stop trying. She was nearly
unconscious at the time but it had still been better than nothing. That’s a
hell of thing at conception, son, your father was better than nothing. Susan grinned.
Murder had made Larry a better lover as well as a better husband. She wiggled
her toes and wondered what sort of family life they would live. Christa had to
be dealt with, of course, but they had survived killing Marcel, what was a
prison break compared to that? Susan felt herself evolving, becoming someone
else, and she welcomed the change. Whatever it took, whatever had to be done,
it didn’t matter; she would raise her son with her husband and nothing was
going to stand in the way of that goal.

The rain lashed the windshield and Larry wondered how long
it could rain in Georgia before it all washed away. There was a tropical system
sneaking its way across the Atlantic Basin and Larry wondered what it would
mean to get a real storm when the low places were already filled with water.
Larry resisted the urge, and resisted it often, to go down to the bridge and
find out if the piling he had seen concrete being poured into was the same one
with Marcel in it, or if they had filled them all. What if the river rose and
the body floated out of the piling? But they had dumped a lot of dirt on top of
Marcel. And those rocks. No, even of the water rose over the piling Marcel was
staying put. Who the hell was it on that video in South Carolina? Larry
wondered about that too. Larry wondered if Christa could see that, or if she
had seen that, and he wondered what it would cost him to ask her.

Larry went into the wing where isolation was and the agent
who had been in Deen’s office stopped him in the hallway “You know, DeMurrey,”
the agent said, “it’s illegal for us to record anything that goes on down there
in that hole.”

“Yes sir,” Larry replied. He didn’t like the man’s tone of
voice or the smirk on his face.

“There’s a big difference between legal and illegal, but we
don’t have to use what we find in court to find something we’ve been looking
for.” And the agent grinned at him.

“You ever sit and wonder how she knew where Carpenter was
buried?” Larry asked. “You ever wonder how a seven year old three thousand
miles might have ever known that? You ever wonder if getting tangled up with
this…” Larry paused as if searching for the right word, “…woman, might be the
very worst thing you could ever do.” Larry took a step forward and put his face
very close to that of the agent’s. “Because I think we’re both getting involved
in way over our pay grades. The only difference is I don’t have a choice and I
know what she is.”

Larry took a step back and grinned. “You already know more
than she likes. Best of luck with that.”

Larry walked into the former solitary wing and could still
feel the despair. The place reeked of hopelessness and was built, designed in
fact, to be a metal grave for the human intellect. Here, time stood still for
men, locked away alone without any light or any sensory input but what they
created. They were fed once a day. There was a metal toilet in each cell that
could be flushed twice a day when the water was cut on. There were no sinks, no
showers, no bed, nothing but the toilet and the floor. The toilet flushing was
the only sense of time the men here would have. The one meal was delivered at
random times, sometimes not at all, to heighten the sense of isolation. “You
have been forgotten” was the message that was to be understood and most of the
men who had be housed here, no matter how hardened or how demented, began to
believe it. The walls were unpainted steel with no way to mark them or alter
them; no method could be used to mark time or the presence of the inmates
there. Each cell had one recessed light which was turned on for twenty minutes
a day. None of this was legal, of course, but none of this was ever reported by
anyone other than the inmates and no one cared. Order was kept by the threat of
this punishment and if an inmate knew something and the prison wanted that
information they had but to place the man in the hole and sooner or later than
information would come out even if the man didn’t come out sane. The guards
took bets on how long it would take for anyone locked in to break and how much
time any given prisoner could take. Larry hated himself for placing bets and
hated himself for winning and he wondered if the men who had gone over the edge
in this place had realized that there were other men who were drinking beer
gained on their insanity.

Christa waited for him in her own cell which a reading light
had been delivered and a cord ran from the guard room. A simple bed had been
also delivered and Christa was reading a book, propped up on a pillow. Larry
thought she could have been an actress, a model, some sort of celebrity, for
there was an aura of elegance about her, as if she were a princess who would
one day be a queen, and knew it. Larry looked down at the cord and wondered if
giving her that sort of weapon was a mistake he would pay for.

“Larry, please,” Christa began, “don’t think such terrible
thoughts. We have so little time left together I would rather you be
optimistic.” She put the book down and turned off the light. The cell was
totally black and Larry momentarily lost his balance in such darkness. “Please
come over here and be with me,” she said. “I never realized there was such a
creature as the fire ant until I discovered a nest of them in Texas. What they
lack in size they make up, in a good fashion, with numbers and ferocity. People
have been killed by these tiny insects and Southerners grow up hating them and
fearing them yet no one has ever offered a solution to their infestation. One
day I was out walking and I happened upon a rather small nest of them, a tiny
mound of dirt that would have fit into a large man’s hands, and I kicked the
very top of it over, just to see what they would do. I saw hundreds of eggs,
none of them larger than a grain of rice, and the fire ants scurried about,
looking for whoever had attacked their home and they also began taking their
eggs back deeper into the mound. I wonder how they decide who takes the eggs
back inside and who looks for the trespassers? I got down on my hands and
knees, risking getting stung, to watch the process. It seemed that there were
those who carried eggs and those who defended, but there didn’t seem to be any
ambiguity. How do they know? How can they tell who is supposed to be doing
what? Yet even with their incredibly primitive minds, if you could even call it
that, they’ve craved out a niche in a foreign land and the natives flee before
them. They kill and they reproduce mindlessly,” Christa paused and Larry could
sense she was toying with him a little in the darkness, “no offense.”

“None taken”

“When I asked Lexi to kill for me I already knew he would.”
Christa said. “I knew he would protest, that he would deny me, that he would
stop speaking to me and threaten me, but I knew that the moment he started
calling me again he was going to kill for me, and just the act of putting his
hands on me again was a precept to putting his hands on her, the way I wanted
his hands on me and the way that I wanted his hands on her, he knew that one
meant the other.”

Larry stared into the total darkness of the cell and fell as
if he were falling. He felt the wind whipping around him and felt as if all the
sanity that has left all of the men who had stared into this same darkness was
calling for his to join them. He felt Christa’s hands on him and he felt
detached from the passion that rose within him. He felt as if she were small,
so very small, so tiny, yet at the same time the smaller she seemed the more
powerful she became. Larry fought against the allure of her touch but his muscles
relaxed in his shoulders and just like someone watching a movie who had decided
not to get absorbed in the storyline, Larry discovered that Christa was the
consummate director. Everything she did was perfectly timed and Larry hoped,
once that hoped was being drained out of him one drop of sweat at a time, that
one day Susan could learn to put her hands on him the way that Christa did.

“You refused to kill for me, Larry,” Christa said in the
darkness, “but Lexi did not refuse. Lexington was one of the greatest sculptors
of the last century and I could have made him immortal. But he strayed. I knew
he would stray if I didn’t keep watch but I decided to allow his toy decide her
own fate. She was his model and she saw me as someone she could push aside. She
was a body, sinew and muscle and bone and perfect, but she confused that with
power. He had her sit in a chair, told her to be perfectly still, and she
awaited with perfect discipline. Her chin was up, her breath stilled, and then
she saw me walk in and she ignored me. I stood in front of her and she took no
notice of me until I smiled at her and then there it was, that moment of
realization. You were so close to it, Larry, but the mallet slammed into the
back of her head just as the first moment of her body began. Lexington pounded
her body to pulp and screamed in rage. But then he threw himself out of the
window of his studio and fell twenty stories to his death.

Some people, Larry, no matter how they dress it up or how
they explain it away, or how they disguise it, are still just insects waiting
for some instinct to tell them what to do and when to do it and there is
actually less reason in their lives than there would be found in a fire ant.”
Larry felt her stand up and suddenly the reading lamp was a white hot sun. “I
want you to go now.”

Larry drove home and wished for five minutes the rain would
simply stop. Susan was there when he arrived and she looked as tired as he
felt. They hugged, held one another without speaking, and suddenly, Larry felt
as if his time with Christa was worse than the murder he had committed. His
wife was pregnant, with his child, and he was selling their future off to a
murderer as he enjoyed her flesh. He felt sick, violently sick, but held Susan
closer, as if he could use her as a shield against what he had done and what he
was going to do.

“Go take a shower.” Susan told him. “I’ve called for pizza.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right out.” But Larry soaked in the hot water
that came out of the shower head until the water began to cool.

Larry found Susan curled up on the sofa eating pizza and
drinking a diet soft drink. This was a sure sign that she wanted comfort food
but wasn’t binging on it, even if she was. Larry knew to approach her
cautiously. “How was work?” he asked.

“Bad.” Susan replied. “Hormones.”

“Is there anything I can say or do that won’t make it
worse?” he asked with a smile.

“No” but Susan had to smile back at him.

Larry took a piece of pizza out of the box and Susan glared
at him. They ate without speaking and Larry dared not reach for the remote. The
television’s grey-white screen was as dead as the sky and Larry longed for
color.

“How many people has she killed?” Susan asked suddenly.

“More than she’s told, more than we’ll ever know, maybe, I
counted at least six, if you count the guys that commit suicide after having
dealt with her.” Larry disliked the subject matter but knew better than try to
divert Susan in this mood.

“How did she know where Carpenter was? She was seven. She
was half a country away.” Susan picked a pepperoni off the pizza and held it
out to Larry like a peace offering.

“Christa told me that during the time she was being raped by
her step father on a regular basis she could tell when he was going to attack
her and sometimes she could tell how. After she killed him she started paying
more attention to her dreams and how she felt about things. She went out to
California and when a guy tried to pimp her she rolled him up in the sheets of
the bed and used a rope to tie him up, like a mummy. She took him out into the
desert and camped out with him, sitting in the car with the ac running and
watching him die. It’s an odd thing, Susan, how small and tiny she is, and yet
she can move the bodies of men with ease. She uses ropes and rugs and all sorts
of things I would never thing of using.”

“That’s because you’re a big man, Larry” Susan laughed. “We
ladies have to use our heads.”

“But she said by the second night the guy was dying,
babbling, and suddenly she could feel his life beginning to leave his body. She
said she began to see a lot of things, like a movie that was all around her and
she saw Carpenter being killed and she saw where his body was.”

“You think that murdering other people gave her this
ability?” Susan asked quietly. “I never thought of it.” Larry said honestly.
“But if I had to guess I would say that when she killed someone she was really
focused on what was happening around her. It’s got to bring a sense of
awareness. She’s different, Sue, she was a very young fourteen when she started
killing, and she never has known much of anything else. But I also think it’s
kind of a death spiral. Like a toilet flushing.”

“Well, that’s poetic,” Susan had to laugh, “but what does it
mean?”

“I think Christa see things more clearly when she’s recently
killed but killing causes her to be hunted. Be hunted causes her to have to hide,
which creates a darkness in her vision. The more she kills the more she see but
the more she is hunted for it. Eventually, she was caught while hiding not
caught while killing, and now that she’s in a box she can’t control it at all.”

“But she saw what happened here.”

“I think she can feed off of what other people experience.”
Larry said slowly. “I’m not sure about any of this. We can be pretty certain
she’s lying when she saying anything at all.”
They ate without speaking and Larry counted the number of pieces of
pepperoni on the pizza before picking up another slice. Susan was prone to
accusing him of getting the most populated pieces and he had to admit this was
true, sometimes. There were four pieces left and he took the one with the
second fewest bits of pepperoni. Susan smiled at him.

“You know, Susan, she’s never mentioned your name.” Larry
said while chewing. “I don’t know if she knows your name. She told me she
thought I was going to kill you. Her vision is imperfect or clouded sometimes.”

“Could we talk about something else?” Susan asked. “I don’t
want to go to bed tonight with her on my mind or on yours.”

Susan slipped out of the bed, nearly fell again and silently
cursed her inability to remember the new bed height. Falling was out of the
question now, as well as drinking, and she had begun to train herself not to
stress out as much as she usually did. She wanted to bathe her unborn son in
waves of soothing emotions as much as she could, even if she knew she couldn’t
do it all of the time, she still wanted to try. She went to the refrigerator
where the remains of the pizza waited to kickstart her heartburn to a new level
but Susan didn’t care. She felt ravenous even though she knew she was still
only a few weeks pregnant, two months at the very most, but the idea of the
condition had begun to consume her. She slipped out into the darkness of the
yard and stood in the driveway and wanted to see stars but the rain was still
falling. Again, she put her hand on her belly, and searched for signs of life.
There had been some weight gain but Susan wanted to feel a kick or a push or
anything. She hungered for that sign like she did odd cravings for food. The
rain soaked her hair, made her nightgown cling to her skin, but she didn’t
care. There was some primal about standing in the rain while pregnant. It was a
primitive and terrifying experience to hold a life within her own and know how
fragile that life was. Susan felt like a lioness and she felt incredibly
isolated. There was a swirl of emotions and Susan drank them down, gulped them
all in, savoring each new experience with each new wave of hormone driven
thought. This was part of it. This was the beginning of motherhood. Susan
planted her feet in the mud of the yard and braced herself against the wind and
the rain and within her came a feeling that there was to be a battle, a battle
from that moment on, that the world would try to make itself less hospitable
for her child and Susan would not allow herself to lose that fight. Nothing
would stand in her and nothing would dare. She would not drink wine or take her
sleeping pills anymore. She would begin to eat better but the rest of the pizza
was going to be devoured. That bitch in that box could be in league with the
devil for all Susan cared but not even the greatest of all evils would harm her
son. The wind picked up and the rain pounded Susan as she slipped off her
nightclothes and stood naked against the weather. She clenched her fists and
raised them into the air and from her mouth, her throat, and her soul, a sound
came like no other she had ever made before. The forces of good and evil,
darkness and light, those awake and asleep, those without the ability to hear
and those that could, knew there was one alive who would fight to the death for
her offspring.

“Susan what the hell are you doing?” Larry shouted at her in
the rain as he came outside.

Susan launched herself at him, wrapped her body around his,
pulled him down onto the earth and bit his neck hard, and grabbed at his body
as if it were a life raft in an ocean. There, in the rain and the wet earth,
the two mated again, furiously, frantically, with more passion than either had
known existed.

“My vision, Larry,” Christa told him at their next meeting,
“rarely extends into the future, but when it does, it does so with exceptional
clarity. That’s what started my path, the first time I picked up a knife and
put it against the skin on the throat of a man, I had already foreseen it. I
knew what it would feel like and what it would taste like and I knew how
frantically he would try to stop the flow and I knew he would look at me at the
moment he realized it was too late, and he knew he was going to die, and very
soon, and I knew that look in his eyes would be unlike any look any man ever
gives a woman. I knew I would kill again, and I knew that what I could give a
man would be enough to tempt him into killing for me. That’s what drove my
heart to beat and made my blood rush through my veins, Larry, is watching a man
kill another man for me. You felt that. You handed her a gun and you were on
the cusp of watching her become so indebted to you that she would never dare a
free thought again in life, except that one of killing you. You were so very
close, Larry, but you stepped back where I stepped forward. I wonder which one
of us will die with the deepest regrets?”

“Are you sure you’re going to survive this?” Larry asked.

“Marginally.” Christa replied with a smile. “I will survive
the initial breach. After that there is peril in every second for us both. If
they find my body dressed in civilian clothing they will know it was you who
helped me. You could go to prison.”

“But not as long as I could for murder.” Larry said.

“True,” Christa got up and began getting dressed, “but the
time draws near. The dam at that park will collapse in a few minutes. This
should be the last time we speak. Did you mail the letter as I asked you to?”

“I did,” Larry replied, “and you could tell if I was lying.”

“I will not tell you where I will go only that it will be
very far away from you and your children and your wife.” Christa tied her shoes
and sat back down. “Go now. Thank you, Larry.”

“I hope you drown,” Larry said “death is the only place
you’ll ever find peace.”

“In less than half an hour you will know.”

Larry pushed the swing slowly, gently, and he knew if he
pushed too hard Susan would glare at him. Little Timmy liked the speed of a
fast push and would babble for more, as long as his mom wasn’t watching.

Susan watched from the kitchen window and she smiled at the
way Larry liked to get away with little things with the baby. Baby? Tim was
nearly two and growing like a weed. He would be a big man, like his daddy.
Susan would never tell Larry about the DNA test she had ran, just to make sure,
because to Larry it didn’t matter. Larry didn’t see himself in his son but only
his mother’s beauty. Susan marveled at the idea that man could really love her
that much. Was it time for another? Christa had said “children” and Susan now
believed the woman’s sight. Half that damn prison had collapsed on top of her
but no body had ever been found.

Christa had been right about the money too, Susan thought,
but it was not time yet to dig it all up. It would keep, it would stay hidden,
until the kids were old enough to move, and who knew, maybe they would never
dig it up. Life was good, hard, but good, now. They had bought the house where
Marcel had hidden his car because that was where Marcel had hidden the money.
Christa was right about how easy it had been to lay claim to it. The back yard
was belonged to them and therefore the money. Susan look out of the window and wondered
where that woman was. Susan hoped that at some point in time, Christa had been
washed down the river, past the place where Marcel lay sleeping forever, and
Susan hoped that was where she had drowned.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Susan was trying to clean the teeth of a man who hadn’t seen
a dentist before in his life. His employer had recently begun health insurance
and the man decided to give it a whirl, in his words. To Susan it looked like
the ground of a training video for bad hygiene and even worse, the man had
eaten breakfast right before he arrived. She desperately wanted to push this
one off on one of the other girls but they were busy. Sissy Bell came in with
the look of dread in her eyes and whispered, “There’s someone here to see you.
I’ll take over” and Susan knew it had begun. She stepped out of the room and
saw two men speaking with the receptionist, Cathy. Cat looked nervous as a… And
Susan suppressed a smile. Okay then, let’s go. “I’m Susan DeMurrey,” she told
them. “You are?”

Susan sat with her hands in her lap and nodded when they
asked questions. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Marcel had been
lowering the price of real estate deals and taking cash kickbacks for it. Just
as the Feds were about to close in Marcel had taken the money and ran. The
texts, the photos, the emails, all of that, just as she knew it would, were
stacked on the table neatly and she knew those photos just might hit the
Internet one day, but underneath all the horror and shock of that knowledge
there was the underlining desire to scream in celebration. There was a very
good reason Marcel was missing. He had stolen a lot of money. And he had made
some bad loans at the bank as well. The appraiser, cute little Jenny Echols,
had been arrested already. Marcel must have been tipped off and hit the road.
Susan was told as long as she helped with the investigation that she could be
assured none of the information they collected would ever be released to the
public. Susan was back at work in an hour and a half. Marcel was on the run. Susan
stepped into the broom closet and cried tears of relief.

Larry arrived at work and he too, was greeted by Federal
agents. The body of Floyd Carpenter had been found and they wanted to know how
a seven year old girl could have known about it. They grilled Larry for a
couple of hours on all aspects of his interactions with Fuller but Larry only
knew what he had been told. They played chess and they talked about execution
and death. Surely, Larry asked them, his conversations with Fuller were being
recorded. Larry looked from one man to the other and realized what Fuller had
told him was true; they weren’t recording the conversations. Larry fought
against the urge to lean back and smile. They didn’t know anything that mattered
and he didn’t know anything at all. They peppered Larry with questions for
another hour but Larry couldn’t tell them anything. They told him his
interactions with Fuller were going to be suspended until further notice and
that was just fine with Larry.

Larry bought two bottles of wine on the way home and when he
arrived he discovered that Susan had bought a case. The hugged hard and didn’t
speak, didn’t dare speak, and Larry carried her to the bed. Later, as the
candles burned low and they watched the news reports of the body of Floyd
Carpenter being discovered, Susan finally spoke, and broke the spell.

“Okay, I need to know if you’re going to leave me.” Susan
said. “If you are, let’s not do this anymore. I still love you, Larry. I love
you more right now than I ever have before and if what I’ve done is something
unforgivable just tell me now.” Susan held her breath and waited. She could
feel her heart beating and she knew she had no right to ask him to stay.

“I love you, Susan. I want to stay.” Larry replied and he
was surprised she had asked. “Look, I know we’ve got problems, even beyond
what’s happened, but we can work this out. I know you believe in therapy and
all that stuff, so if you want to go, just tell me and I’ll go. We’ve been
together since High School. Let’s stay together now, okay?”

They both would remember that night as the best night of
their lives to that point.

The next morning Larry drove to work and got behind a slow
moving concrete truck. The never-ending rain caused the truck to pick up more
water from the road than usual and Larry had to back off even further than he
would have liked. When the truck turned off of the main highway Larry caught
his breath. Were they working on the bridge? Larry knew he shouldn’t, knew
better than to do it, but he followed the truck off the road and then he took
one of the side roads that ran next to the river. The water was high and Larry
knew if he got stuck it would be very bad. But from where he parked he could
see the concrete truck backing up, its chute extended, and it was pouring
concrete into one of the pilings.

Once at work, Larry chatted about the body of Floyd
Carpenter being found and everyone wanted to know how Fuller had known. Larry
didn’t know and didn’t care. They had separated Fuller from his reality and
Larry was happy.

“Hey Larry,” one of the Feds asked, “I hear one of your
local bankers skipped town with a truck load of cash.”

“Can’t trust’em” Larry replied. “The rich get richer.”

“Did you hear he bought a bus ticket to Mexico?” the agent
said. “Yeah, he had planned this thing out pretty good. Used a black internet
account to buy it and we have no idea when the bus left for which one it was.”

“You can still get him, can’t you?” Larry tried to sound
hopeful.

“Yeah, but who knows how much cash he took with him, you know?”

Larry agreed and left the breakroom even happier than
before.

“DeMurrey,” it was Warden Deen. He was waiting for Larry at
the last door before Death Row, “if you have a few moments we would like to
speak with you.”

Larry had never been in the Warden’s office and the Warden
had never spoken to him before. Deen was a thin faced and humorless man whose
office was filled with photos of condemned men. That’s creepy, Larry thought,
but he didn’t say anything.

“Christa Marie Fuller is a monster on an order of magnitude
that very few people ever witness as closely as you have, DeMurrey, and still
live to speak of it.” Deen said. “We appreciate the fact that you managed to
impress her enough so that she shed light on a murder nearly twenty years old.”

“You’re welcome.” Larry said and one of the agents in the
room chuckled.

“She wants to interact with you on a more regular basis.”
Deen told him. “She’s offered to give you the names and locations of victims we
don’t know about yet. But I think you ought to know something up front about
this.”

“Yes sir?” Larry swallowed hard. He didn’t like the way this
sounded.

“The first thing is that Fuller was in the first grade, and
she lived in Kentucky, and Carpenter was murdered in California.” Deen said.
“We cannot find any connection between that woman and that murder.”

“Somebody had to tell her then.” Larry said but he didn’t
believe it.

“We would like to know too,” Deen said, “if you can get it
out of her. But she has a second condition.

“Yes sir?” Larry saw one of the agents was grinning at him.

“She wants these visits to be conjugal.”

“The turnkeys told you of my demands, Larry?” Christa sat in
an overstuffed chair that had recently and quite rapidly been brought to her
cell. “The expression on your face right now is truly priceless.”

“Why not you, Larry?” Christa laughed. “You have more to
lose right now than anyone else outside this cell and in uniform, that’s true
isn’t it?” She unzipped her jumpsuit and Larry wondered if she planned to take
him right here in the cell. “I see a well made of steel, a body hurtling down
to the bottom with sand, then rocks, and finally mud poured down upon it. I see
a river with a gun rushing to meet its reflection. I see a hole in a wooden
floor. I see a lot of things Larry, and you want to keep what you have. But
I’ll make you a deal; if she says no I’ll find someone else and I’ll keep your secrets.
But if you say yes then I will tell you were a dead man hid more money than
you’ll ever be able to spend in your lifetime.” Fuller zipped her jumpsuit up
very slowly and Larry realized she had caught him looking. “Go ask permission
to stray, Larry”

“She wants what?” Susan’s voice was a lot calmer than Larry
expected and that frightened him even more than if she had exploded. Susan sat
across from the table from Larry with her hands folded in front of her. “So
what if she sees a steel well? So what if she sees a gun in the water? So what
if she see a hole in the floor? Everybody thinks Marcel is on the run. You
think they’ll believer her if she starts talking about steel wells and
reflections?”

“Susan,” Larry began, hesitated, and then began again, “remember,
it was Christa who told me you were cheating on me.”

“Oh, yeah, you were going to tell me about that.” Susan
wondered why they both had avoided the subject.

“She told me to go home.” Larry replied. “She told me to go
home and do what any man would do. Christa told me to go home in the dark and I
would see what she saw.” Larry paused for a few seconds. “It isn’t what she
says sometimes it’s the way that she says it. Carpenter was buried in an open
field ten miles from anywhere and two thousand miles from where she was. Yet
she was able to describe the place in enough detail they found the body in a
few hours. She claims to know where other people are buried, people she ether
had killed or people she killed herself. I can stall her, we can stall her, but
I’m telling you right now, the next time she pinpoints a twenty year old murder
we’re going to have to talk about what that means.”

“More?” Susan rolled her eyes. “Let me guess, she wants to
make a sex tape?”

“Christa told me she would tell us where Marcel hid the
money.” Larry told her. “I think she knows where it is.”

“So you’re a Death Row sex toy and a prostitute?” Susan
asked. “Larry, this is insane.”

“She knew about you and Marcel.” Larry replied evenly. “And
she knew where Carpenter was buried. And you have to admit that her description
of where the gun is and where the body is matches pretty well. What are you
going to think if she tells them where another body is buried?”

“The same thing I’m thinking now, Larry,” Susan stood up and
paced. “IF what you are saying is true, and IF she really has some sort of psychic
powers, I can’t believe she’s telling deep dark secrets just for a roll in the
hay before they put her down.” Susan stopped pacing. “Larry, this woman wants a
little more than just sex. That’s the hook to get you in her bed. That chick is
looking for something and she’s using you to find it.”

“Whoa” Larry said.

Susan’s phone rang and she started to turn the ringer off
but answered it and gave Larry a wide eyed look. “Hello?” Susan said. “Yes.
Really! Well that’s interesting. Hey, Cat, let me call you back later, Larry’s
got to go to work in a few, okay?” Susan sat down beside Larry and grinned.
“Marcel’s car just turned up at Myrtle Beach. They got a video of him
abandoning it at a cheap hotel.”

Larry drove through the rain as it pounded down as if it was
targeting his truck. He wondered if Susan would know if he didn’t tell her? But
did Christa want if sex wasn’t all she wanted? Why him? What did he had to
offer her that no one else did? That thought ran through Larry’s mind all the
way to work and all the way into Christa’s cell, where she was waiting for him.

“Odd, isn’t it, Larry,” Christa began, “all the excuses she
had to slip into the darkness with another man can be used to allow you to slip
into the darkness with me. There’s only one real reason two people ever mate
with one another and that’s because they want to do it. There may or may not be
reason enough to push them towards it or away from it, but in the end, two
people with an attraction are going to consider the possibilities and if there
isn’t enough pushing those two away they’re going to join. What you’re waiting
for now, Larry, is a good enough excuse, some reason to throw reason out into
the rain. She’s intrigued by all this, you know that don’t you? So little, so
very little, pushed her into the darkness with another man, yet there is so
much here for you to experience and she’s so much against it. She isn’t against
it because of religious reasons or ethics but because now she wants you to
stay. You will, of course, but that doesn’t mean you’ll say no to me.”

“I still don’t know why you chose me.” Larry said. He could
feel his blood in his veins. Christa was sitting in the chair with her legs
tucked under like a cat and Larry wondered how long it had been since a man had
touched this woman and lived to tell about it.

“I chose you because you were the one I could bring here.”
Christa said. “I saw everything I needed to see. Honestly, my vision is never
truly as clear at one time as it is the other. I thought you would kill her. I
thought you’d need me more at this point than you do, but there’s still that
bullet resting on the road, that thing I didn’t see until it got here, and
there is still enough money hidden in a new place to make you and that woman
happy forever.” Christa paused. “But Larry, what are you going to do if I get
undressed right now? Are you going to turn around and close your eyes? The men
in the upper floor of this building want to put a camera and a microphone in
here but they fear losing anything I tell you. They fear me because I am a
woman who kills and kills men and wrecks their lives. But you do not fear me.”

“No” Larry said and he licked his lips.

“Then go tell those men I can tell you where the remains of
Robert Jenkins are.” Christa said. “And tell them I want everyone prisoner in
solitary removed. There are seventeen cells in that wing. I want them all for
myself, and for you. But before you go you’ll beg me to see. You’ll beg me for
the truth. You’ll toss away all doubt and all uncertainty. You will enter the darkness
with me, Larry, and you will do it willingly. ”

“No” Larry said and Christa laughed at him. Larry went to
her.

“Do you actually
enjoy sex?” Larry blurted this out before he realized he had thought it.
Christa lay on her back by his side and Larry had been watching her breathe.
Her skin reacted to his touch; gooseflesh appeared on her breasts when he
touched her neck and her legs parted slightly when he ran his hand down the
length of her body. Yet Christa used sex to lure men closer to her, and Larry
wondered how much of what they did was to lure him close to some end he could
not control or predict.

“Yes” Christa answered after a moment. “I enjoy it a great
deal. For different reasons, depending on the lover, but with you, yes, it’s a
starkly physical thing. With the men I have killed it is very much like playing
chess, arranging the pieces no pun intended, and setting the trap with a bait
they will come back to even as they sense the danger.” Christa stood up and
stood over Larry and he gazed up at her wondering how men came to be so blinded
by this woman as to be killed by her. But he had to admit she was thorough.
Christa put a lot of effort into pleasing him and he could see getting lost in
that effort.

“Alfred Robinson was a man well placed in the church and I
knew by the way she shook hands with me he was looking for something that no
Godly man would ever seek. I knew he would try, and I knew if I turned him down
he would have to keep trying, and I knew if I started with him I could stop and
he would give me anything, and everything to start again. I flirted with a
friend of his, a politician, a man named Robert Jenkins. At first their
friendship, and their need to promote Jenkins’ ascension to power, kept me as
sort of a side bet, an interesting competition that either could lose and
neither would destroy their work to avenge. They had other men around them who
were watching, waiting, and both had other competitors for other parts of their
power and I was seen as women like me are always seen as; property to be used,
borrowed, enjoyed, but ultimately cast aside or destroyed. Marilyn discovered
this far too late, and used the power she held to no affect at all. Had she
simply told the President of the United States that she wouldn’t ever see him
again she would have been able to print money with her picture on it and spend
it anywhere. But she gave into to him to the point he was careless and his
power meant more than her body. I cut them both off at the same time and I
blamed my love for the other man to each.

Jenkins was going to be the next Senator from California and
there were many men with much money who wanted to see that happen. Alfred knew
this and he was beholding to some of the same men for his power inside of the
church. When tensions between the two reached a boiling point there was a
meeting set up to focus both of them on the long term goals of the moneyed.
There were those who saw the tax exempt status of the church as a way to hide
their real estate holdings and there were those who saw Jenkins as friendly to
this endeavor but it would take teamwork for this to happen and no one wanted a
piece of ass to get in the way.

It was at this point in my life I started paying attention
to the details of my dreams at night. I also began surrendering my time to my
daydreams which were getting stronger and stronger. I could tell when a man
would call. I could tell what he wanted before he asked for it. I could see the
thoughts of those who would use me and I could suddenly see quite clearly that
Alfred mean to be Jenkins’ alibi when I was given an overdose of drugs and
dragged into the sea to drown. But even in this they both sought to gain
position over those around them. This was their wedding vows; the event that
would bind them together forever. My death was the ways and means for the two
to become one for they would each be culpable. Alfred told his people, as
Jenkins told his own, that they would handle the problematic whore and the deal
would be sealed.

The three of us were sunning on a private beach, one of the
church members owned the property and there was no way to get there except by
boat. After my death, they were going to dump me off near a much more public
swimming area and my body would wash up and be found by people not even
remotely connected to either church or state. Robert Jenkins, for all his
bright smiles and shrewd ability to handle people, had no idea how to kill
someone, even someone who would be drugged beyond the ability to fight back,
and Alfred was, deep down inside, a coward. Neither could do more than to offer
to get me drunk and they both waited for the other to spike my drink. After a
couple of hours of flirting shamelessly with both men and both of them were
beginning to wonder what it would be like to share me, I walked over to where
Robert Jenkins was laying on a bright white blanket in the sand and I put a
razor to his throat. He knew I mean to kill him and he turned on all of his
charms and his smile and he spoke to me in a voice meant to have the pope
himself kneeling but the look in his eyes told me he knew. I pressed down and
pulled the blade across his jugular vein and blood leapt from his body as if
had been waiting all these years to finally escape.

Alfred, poor Alfred! He was so totally shaken by the event.
As Robert Jenkins lay with his blood evacuating his body, and Larry the man
never moved, Alfred ran back and forth from the ice chest to the blanket
yammering as if even his voice couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I watched
the realization in Robert’s eyes go from, ‘She is going to kill me,’ to ‘I am
going to die’ a very subtle yet very intense difference in emotion. Then the
light in his eyes faded and he stared at the sun without blinking. I dropped
the razor and waded out into the clear water of the Pacific and the blood
stained red the waves. That was the first time I could see very clearly how the
future would come to me. I knew Alfred would bury the body where it lay and I
knew he would kill himself rather than admit he had failed so utterly and had
lost so much. I knew that too many man had their plans wrecked by what lie
between my legs to simply let go. They would come after me now and now I
realized that the men I had killed in the past would come back to haunt me, but
really, Larry, no one who kills truly believes that the future ends in peace.
The question was if I could or would kill again, and give them something to pin
on me that they could turn into an execution. Besides, I saw it almost as a
dare. I already knew who to kill and how to kill, if I really wanted them to
lose sleep at night.

But the private beach, Larry, it was once owned by Sherman Dawn,
back five years ago when Jenkins bled out. There was an old lighthouse, nothing
but the steps remained, really, and if you draw a straight line from the middle
of those steps about fifty feet or so, Robert will be there waiting, under
about five feet of sand.”

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Susan walked into the house and smelled salmon baking and
there was, she had to pause at this sight, wine glasses on the table, real wine
glasses, and there was a table cloth, too. Larry was busy at the counter
looking at, and this was a sight she never thought she would see, Larry was
bent over a cookbook while holding a cucumber in one hand and a knife in the
other. The man looked like a culinary wizard trying to summon some Demon of the
Dark Arts of Cooking. He heard her giggle and turned around.

“There are no recipes for salads in this cookbook” he said
gravely and Susan had to laugh.

“It’s a Syrah,” Larry said, “which means it pairs well with
salmon that has been broiled with a hint of I- left- it-in- about- a- minute-
too- long.” He poured the wine into one
of the glasses and Susan held her breath. He did it. He didn’t pour it all the
way to the top.

“Larry,” Susan paused just for a second to catch her breath
again, “what are you doing up at this hour?”

“I’ve been transferred to first shift starting the day after
tomorrow” Larry raised his glass. “And I’m also ten percent richer for it.”

“Wow!” Susan raised her glass to meet his. “What brought
this on?”

“They found Carpenter.” Larry said and stopped smiling.
“Right where she said he would be.”

“Damn”

“Yeah, but we still have reason to celebrate.” Larry then
hurried to the kitchen and brought back matches and lit the candles. “I think
after the last couple of weeks we ought to have a drink.”

Susan went into the bedroom to change clothes and take a
shower and there was a new bed. It was a king sized bed with the wrought iron
headboard and footer like she had said she had wanted when they went shopping
for furniture right after they had gotten married. The man had actually made
the bed, and as she dug down past the new pillows she smelled the sheets and
was amazed he had already washed them. The mattress was one of the firmer ones
and she hated a bed that was too soft. But Susan knew why he had bought a new
bed but the fact he had bought one she liked said a lot.

Susan sat on the sofa in stunned silence. Larry had just
ordered “Under a Tuscan Sun” off of Netflix and opened a second bottle of wine.
He’s dating me, Susan thought to herself, he’s putting real effort into making
me happy. She leaned back on the sofa and, she felt herself beginning to blush
just a little and her body began to interact with the wine and emotions. What
if he tries to get me into that bed, she thought. She tried to remember the
last time they had kissed and couldn’t. It had been, three weeks, maybe? Should
she give him some help and take her bra off or just let him drive? Susan tried
not to grin. Her body was fueled by wine and by the fact her husband seemed to
have suddenly noticed the things that made her very happy. He was an easy man
to love, Susan realized and she caught her breath when she realized she wanted
to tell him that, now, suddenly. She remembered the first time Larry had
carried her into this house and laid her down in this very sofa. The bra was
itchy. Susan reached back and unsnapped it while Larry poured more wine. It was the least a woman could do.

Susan got up in the middle of the night and nearly fell. The
new bed was much higher than the old one and she was disorientated. Years ago,
when she had been a child growing up the bathroom had been down the hallway, on
the left, but now there was a bathroom to the right of the bedroom. Susan had
to pee,badly, but she kept going left, down the hallway to the kitchen. The
room was dark except for the lights from the clock on the microwave and the
oven. There was even an LED clock on the refrigerator. Susan really had to pee.
There was another light, a brief but intense burst of blue. Her cell phone was
buzzing at her. Susan picked it up and saw that it was “Work2” which was the
code name for Marcel. The text message read, “I need to see you.” Susan caught
her breath. Urine began to run down her legs as she felt her body surrender to
terror. But she had known this might happen. They had talked about this
possibility and everything that might happen once the car and Marcel’s phone
was found. This was the police, Susan knew it, and they were trying to see if
she would respond.

“Fuck you,” Susan typed. “You run off with some whore for
two weeks and now you want me back? Hell no.”

She waited. She wondered if she ought to wake Larry but no,
this was her mess, and she would clean it up. She felt the sliminess of her
urine on her legs and hated herself for it, but she would clean that up too.

“I can explain” a text came in.

“I can too” Susan typed in. “You’re a slut. You dumped me
for somebody else and now she’s gone and you want some” She sent that one in
and typed again, “They changed Larry’s shift. He’s home now. I can’t do this
anymore anyway. Fuck off.” And with that Susan closed out the messenger and
blocked “Work2” from contacting her again. Susan didn’t turn on the kitchen
light but opened the refrigerator instead and cleaned up her mess by the cold
light. She put her nightgown in the washer and bathed with a wet washcloth
before getting in bed with her husband and staring at the ceiling in the
darkness until the alarm clock went off.

“This came in last night.” Susan told Larry as he woke up.
He read the texts silently and cursed their timing.

“We knew this was coming,” Larry said “and here it is.”

They both felt as if something good had been sullied by the
past but deep inside, they both saw relief in the beginning of what they had
both dreaded. As long as there was no body there was no crime. As long as
neither turned on the other there was nothing anyone could so. Larry had taken
the courses to be a detective and knew their methods. He and Susan went through
the dialog over and over, both playing the part of inquisitor and both playing
the part of the innocent accused.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Keith Boer didn’t
know anything about murder or adultery, or much of anything else. He had
drifted from one prison to another, one jail to another, and stealing was all
he really knew. H did miss his friend Bruce, who had tried their first attempt in making home brew in prison. Too much of something and Bruce had bled out before they could get him out of the cell. But he was here to steal not relive memories. The rain kept people in and Keith stole from houses not
people. People were trouble. Keith had been walking since yesterday and had
tired of it. Most houses that had for sale signs in front of them were locked
but every once in a while they’d be careless and leave one open. Keith tried
one after another in the new subdivision and finally a door opened for him. All
the amenities of a new home! Keith took off his clothes and bathed, wished
there were towels and soap but he would settle for clean warm water. Keith
allowed himself to air dry in the bathroom and decided to explore the place,
nude. There was a washer and a dryer, but no soap for the washer. Keith didn’t
care. He’d take what he would get whatever it was. No food, no booze, nothing
he could carry away at all, which was sad, but at least he was dry and his
clothes would be somewhat cleaner. Keith checked the garage and a second or two
of fear gripped him. There was a car there. He stepped back into the house very
quickly and locked the door behind him. Oh shit! And he was naked. But the
house was empty; he knew that, so what the hell was the car doing there? He
peeped out the window and the car was just sitting there. Finally, Keith
decided, naked and all, to investigate the car. The keys were in it. There were
some clothes that looked like they might fit him and even some cash in the
pockets. He opened the trunk and found more clothes, a little more money and
booze. There was a case of wine and a couple of bottles of whiskey. The keys
were in the car. Keith knew if he got caught he could do some real time but he
also knew if he moved fast enough he could be in South Carolina before anyone
missed the car. He could hit Myrtle Beach and ditch the car, keep the booze,
rent a cheap room somewhere and drink hard on the beach. Keith left his old
clothes in the washer and drove off wearing new pants that were just a little
too big for him. He hadn’t noticed the cell phone in the car but when it dinged
Keith jumped. Damn, they could track him with that thing! Well, let them track
this, Keith thought and he pulled over to a mail box and left the cell phone in
it. The rain poured down and it took Keith nearly a full minute to discover how
to turn the wipers on.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The rain was still falling as Larry drove to work at the
prison. He had no illusions as to what would come his way eventually. Susan and
Marcel had been texting one another on a daily basis for two months now and had
exchanged a lot of emails. Susan starting sending texts to Marcel as soon as
Larry had left for work every night and the two had talked for hours. Even as Larry passed the last house at the
end of the road where they lived he knew Susan, to keep up appearances, was
sending emails and texts to a dead man. It might be a while before Marcel’s car
was found. Susan told him Marcel always parked in the garage of a house that
was for sale and Susan would pick him up there. To keep his wife from knowing
where he was he would turn his phone off. Now that phone was sitting in the
car, sitting in the garage, of a house that Marcel would never sell. How long
would it take before his wife started looking for him? How long before they
missed him at work? Marcel was a known party animal, loved the night life, and
so Larry thought it might be a couple of days before anyone thought anything
was wrong. If there was a merciful God in Heaven then they would get a week
before anyone made any serious attempt to find Marcel. But at the most, in ten
days, someone was going to read Susan’s texts and emails and then the investigation
would lead to his front door. Susan would pretend to be mad at Marcel for
cutting off communications and call his office pretending to look for a new
house. She would keep it up for at least a week and then slowly stop trying to
contract Marcel who in a week might be under two hundred feet of concrete. Larry
hoped Marcel was seeing someone else, other than Susan, and he wondered how
deep the investigation might go. But until there was a body there wasn’t a
murder and Larry hoped Marcel’s wife would simply think he had ran off with
some other woman. But deep down Larry knew that if someone went missing and
that someone was seeing a married woman, the husband was going to be looked
over very carefully. How he acted at work might be questioned. Everything that
he did would be now be considered normal or not normal and Larry had never once
wondered what would happen if he had to act like himself. Larry got out of his
truck and fished his ID out of his pocket and scanned it, and then went inside.

Susan took a deep breath and looked over the texts she has
sent over the last couple of days. They would look very much like those she had
sent, and received, over the last eight weeks or so. She, too, knew that soon
she might be sitting across a table with page after page of her innermost
thoughts printed out and part of a public record in an investigation. What was
worse is she had to keep adding to the volume of work. Susan sent a message
chiding Marcel for standing her up and asking him for an explanation. She would
send a few more and the tone would get angrier and angrier. Susan had been
stood up by Marcel before, when his wife was suspicious, but he always sent a
text within a few hours. Susan also pulled up her account with a local
furniture store. They had once offered new flooring with every new refrigerator
someone bought and she had filled out all the information but never completed
the transaction. She had hoped the price had dropped but it never did. If the
offer was still up they could get imitation Oak on the floor and that would
explain the carpet being gone. But they had to do all of this very slowly.

She sent another text and thought about more wine. No, sober
was better right now. Wine was one of those little things, one of those small
sharp pieces of a sandspur caught in an ankle sock. Larry gulped wine, good
wine, and never once thought that it might be more than just a buzz. Beer was
his alcohol of choice and wine had to be cold and sweet for him to drink it. A
good solid Cab meant nothing to the man. Marcel knew wines, loved talking about
wines, and Susan loved wine, too. She wanted to go to Napa Valley and just
spend a week tasting wine. Larry wanted to go fishing for five days and drink
beer until he passed out and snored. Susan sent a text and scolding Marcel for
being a coward. Did he see Larry’s truck parked outside the house last night?
Is that what spooked him? Was the threat of getting caught greater than what
she could do for him? Susan knew it was. She knew all that she had ever been to
Marcel was a conquest, a number he could count up when he thought about how
many women he had slept with, and Susan knew that was all it would have ever
been. It would be easy to believe that Marcel had found some young thing and
gotten carried away with being with a younger woman and simply left for a
while. Marcel’s wife was used to her husband’s excuses for not being hone and
Susan wondered how in the hell… But now she would find out. Susan bit her lip
and tried not to start crying again. Larry might still leave her and she wasn’t
sure that was what she wanted, even now, especially now. They had talked about
what the detectives would say if they came, when they came, and they had talked
about how Larry was going to react to reading the texts and emails. Susan knew
that she just might land Larry in prison and hell, she might go too. But even
if they got away with it, deep down in her heart, Susan thought she was going
to lose him anyway. But why not? She had instigated the affair and she had
reveled in it. Susan had known Larry might find out, but what was he going to
do? The idea he might kill Marcel and even kill her, was always in the very
back of her mind but she always thought it would end in divorce. She never
thought of it ending with her and Marcel together. But now he was dead. Susan
closed her eyes and prayed for forgiveness. Her inability to handle the post
High School life of a cheerleader had led to this. A man was dead and another
was helping cover up a murder because she had gotten bored. Susan wondered how
it would feel to simply walk into the police station and tell them what she had
done and serve the time due her. Susan decided that if they were caught she
would confess. She sat down and wondered if she would go to hell for this.

Larry scanned his ID again and was checked for weapons by
the first set of guards. “Evening, Larry,” Mitch said, and Larry wondered how
many times they had gone through this.

“Yep,” Mitch said, “but if’n he don’t get his grades up
he’ll be watching from the stands.”

And that was that. Larry marveled at how calm he sounded,
how normal it seemed to be at work. Larry walked into the breakroom and got a
two cups of coffee and a tray. He walked down the corridor and through two more
checkpoints and then he was there.

“Morning, DeMurrey,” the guard said. Larry didn’t recognize
him. He must be a replacement for one of the three Federal Agents who were
there to watch over the prisoners after one had committed suicide last year.
Larry thought it ironic they would guard someone from suicide when that person
was there to be executed but the Feds were like that. “She’s waiting for you.”

“So, Larry,” Christa stopped setting up the chess pieces
said as he entered her cell, “about last night…” Larry wondered how this woman
came to be here and not for the first time. Even in a black Death Row jumpsuit
Christa Fuller looked beautiful. No, Larry stopped and looked at her again,
elegant? No, there wasn’t a word he could think of but each time Larry saw
Christa he paused, and he noticed her, as if it were the first time.

Larry felt a cold chill run up his spine but he tried to
vamp his way through it, “I wasn’t on top of my game.”

“Weren’t you?” Christa laughed at him. “You finally got to
know me a little better last night, Larry, you understand at last what makes me
get up every morning and move forward. Now, we truly have something in common,
don’t we?”

“What do you mean?” Larry swallowed hard. She didn’t know.
She couldn’t know.

“Ever wonder what it would be like to be able to see in the
dark?” Christa asked. “What if you could and no one else? What would it mean if
you were the only one, or at least one of the few, would could see what no one
else could see, even if you couldn’t predict when you could see it?” Christa
laughed and stood up. “What if I told you that none of the conversations we
have ever had were recorded?”

“What?” Larry was stunned. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“That was one of the items that came up in the lawsuit.”
Christa told him. “Poor Mr. Malcom Petty felt like he was under a microscope
all the time and that’s one of the central reasons he killed himself.” She
laughed again, “No, that isn’t vision, Larry, that’s straight from my lawyer.
That’s the reason that they allow you to play with me. But they cannot spy on
us and they never will.”

“They told me…” But Larry stopped and thought about it. When
the Feds debriefed him after each visit they always seemed surprised at what he
told them. They really didn’t know.

“They’re pretty sure they have me now, you know” Christa say
down again, “but they aren’t really sure what information they can use if they
get it illegally. That only applies to me. If they find out what you’ve done
I’m pretty sure you’ll be housed a few doors down.”

“What do you want?” Larry demanded.

“I’ll tell you when the time comes.” Christa said. “But
right now you and I need to play chess. Your openings are improving but you’re
letting me distract you from the game. I have some things to tell you but I’m
sure you’ll not see the wisdom in it until the time comes. Sit. Play. Act
normal. We have an hour together. You might as well play your part in this
theater that you and I have begun.” Christa smiled at Larry and he felt an odd
warmth for her. “We all have our parts to play, like the pieces on the board,
Larry. I can help you get off the board.”

Larry drove home in the blinding rain. How many days in a
row did this make? It had rained every day for, five, no, a week now, yes. A
streak of lightning flashed and Larry saw everything lit up as if it didn’t
exist without the light. He wondered if Marcel’s car had been found yet or if
anyone had really started looking. No, it was still too soon. Larry pulled into
the driveway and got out in the rain and went inside. The house was filled with
the smell of bacon and Larry felt some of his tension ease.

“Hey baby,” Susan called to him from the kitchen, “in here!”

There was bacon and eggs and Orange juice on the table and
Larry wondered if Susan had gotten up early just for this. He sat down at the
table and wondered how to begin to tell her about Christa.

“Is it okay to talk about us right now?” Susan asked before
Larry could speak.

“Yeah, okay.” Larry said.

“Look, I’ve done wrong and I know it,” Susan began, “but I
want you to know that whatever happens I still love you. I’m still in love with
you.” She paused and then continued. “I can’t take back what I did but I can
tell you if you think there is any way at all for us to work this out I will do
whatever it takes for as long as it takes. You don’t have to answer me right
now and I won’t ask anything of you right now, but I just want you to know,
okay?” She sat down and Larry realized she had been practicing this. Susan had
wanted him to know how she felt and she meant what she said. Larry couldn’t
help himself and couldn’t stop the tears. “I love you too” he managed to
mumble, “but there’s a problem here.”

“What?” Susan looked a little surprised. “You mean…?”

“No, much bigger than that.” Larry said. “I’ll have to start
from the beginning.”

“It was about two months ago,” Larry began and he and Susan
exchanged glances, “when we got a prisoner who came into the yard in an armored
car. Usually they take the really bad ones to a Federal facility but because
she had been convicted in Georgia first we were going to get the first crack at
killing her.”

“The woman they called ‘The Mantis’?” Susan was stunned. “You
didn’t tell me about this! Is that the woman they think murdered all those men
and drove the rest to suicide?”

“The very one.” Larry replied. “Anyway, the first thing she
did was trip and fall, and I caught her. A day after that she offered to
disclose where the body of Floyd Carpenter was buried if they would allow her
to teach me how to play chess.”

“The very same,” Larry continued, “and they didn’t know how
she knew anything about it. She was seven when he went missing, but the Feds
decided that after that, whatever she asked for she was going to get, and that
included me.”

“That’s the odd part.” Larry said. “She couldn’t have known
my name but asked for me by name. The first meeting she wanted to teach me to
play chess, and I’m as dumb as a rock as far as that sort of game goes. I
thought they had the place wired for sound but today she told me they didn’t. I
think she knows, uh, things.”

“Things?” Susan didn’t like the way Larry sounded now. “What
things?”

“Two nights ago,” Larry began, “she was telling me that I
ought to break my routine, I ought to go home and take care of business. She
was pretty empathic about it. That’s what I was doing home.”

Susan didn’t respond so Larry continued.

“Tonight she asked me how it went.” Larry took a deep
breath. “I think somehow she knows what we did.”

“That’s not possible, Larry.” Susan said but she wasn’t sure
she believed it. “How?”

“She told me tonight that there were times she could see in
the dark.” Larry got up and got some more bacon. “Bacon?’ he asked after he
realized he had taken the last pieces.

“No, you go ahead,” Susan said but she smiled at him. “Okay,
I have to get to work. We have to keep our routines but I want to know more. We’ll
talk when I get home, okay?”

“Okay.” Larry replied. “I’m going to get a shower and get
some sleep. I’m really tired.”

Susan stood up, hesitated, then walked over and kissed Larry
on the top of his head. ‘I’ll wake you when I get in.”

Susan got into her car and despaired at the rain. It was
coming down in buckets again. Sheets of rain tore through the now normal
downpour and her wipers seemed to just piss it off. It had only been two days,
not two full days, and she was still texting and emailing a dead man, just as
she had done when he had been alive. It was an odd thing, Susan thought, to
know someone was dead, that she had a hand in killing him, yet she was doing
her part to avoid being implicated in his death. Susan kept checking her phone
at work, as if she were expecting a text or an email, and at lunch she went
dropped by the bank and paid the mortgage, even if it was a week early. She
hung around and chatted with one of the tellers and Susan made sure to glance
towards Marcel’s office more than once. Yet it has only been two days. Likely,
just now, someone was wondering if something was wrong.

Susan stopped long enough to eat a salad and pondered why
Larry hadn’t told her one of the most famous female serial killers of all time
was less than a half hour drive from their home. Oh, and he had taken up chess
and fortune telling with, Susan searched for the name, Christa Fuller, and the
name brought the vision of a bright eyed, dark haired woman who couldn’t have
been more than five-two yet had managed to get three men to kill for her and
three more to kill themselves, that everyone knew of so far. And now Floyd
Carpenter? Susan wondered why she hadn’t heard about any of this in the news.
If they found Floyd Carpenter after nearly…how long? Susan shook her head and
tried to focus on keeping her schedule. She texted Marcel again, this time
threatening to break up with him if he didn’t call her tonight.

It was raining even harder when Susan left work. She was one
of the two dental hygienists in town who had lived in Jacksonville Georgia all
their lives and she knew who was sleeping with… Susan paused at that thought.
How many people knew about her and Marcel? She counting the times they had been
together. Since the first of last month, four, no, five times. But three of
those times had been in the last month. Still, Marcel was nothing if he wasn’t
careful. They always met after dark and they never took their cell phone on
dates. Susan wondered when they would find Marcel’s car. She wondered how long
it would take before his wife reported him missing. Larry had already left for
work when Susan arrived. The house was silent and dark. Susan sent an angry
text to a dead man and took a Valium to help her sleep.

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About Me

The Non Disclaimer

My writing reflects the things I see, think, and experience, and those things in my past that have led me to be me. It is not always pretty, it is not always funny, and no one has ever made mention of my life as a Disney Movie. If sex, drugs, profanity, or a general irreverence for all things religious somehow offends you, well, there are other blogs which will satisfy your need for self assurance.